Water is Life: Womens human rights in national and local water governance in Southern and Eastern Africa
Anne Hellum · Patricia Kameri-Mbote
Oct 2015 · African Books Collective
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640
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About this ebook
This book approached water and sanitation as an African gender and human rights issue. Empirical case studies from Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe show how coexisting international, national and local regulations of water and sanitation respond to the ways in which different groups of rural and urban women gain access to water for personal, domestic and livelihood purposes. The authors, who are lawyers, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists, explore how women cope in contexts where they lack secure rights, and participation in water governance institutions, formal and informal. The research shows how women - as producers of family food - rely on water from multiple sources that are governed by community based norms and institutions which recognise the right to water for livelihood. How these common pool water resources - due to protection gaps in both international and national law - are threatened by large-scale development and commercialisation initiatives, facilitated through national permit systems, is a key concern. The studies demonstrate that existing water governance structures lack mechanisms which make them accountable to poor and vulnerable water users on the ground, most importantly women. The findings thus underscore the need to intensify measures to hold states accountable, not just in water services provision, but in assuring the basic human right to clean drinking water and sanitation; and also to protect water for livelihoods.
About the author
Anne Hellum is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo, Norway.
Patricia Kameri-Mbote is an Associate Professor of Law and Chair of Department, Department of Private Law, Faculty of Law, University of Nairobi. She holds a Doctorate in Law and a Master of Laws Degree from Stanford University; a Master of Laws in Law and Development from Warwick University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Women's Law from the University of Zimbabwe. Her teaching and research interests fall in the areas of environmental law, law, science and technology, intellectual property rights, land law and feminist jurisprudence. She has served as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law and research director at the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi. She has also taught international environmental law at the University of Kansas. She is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law. She has published widely in the areas of international environmental law, biotechnology, women's rights and property rights.
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